L/S¥/ 

■ J5S 



> 



5 

y 1 



AN ADDRESS 



M. PRESTON JOHNSTON, LL D., 



BEFORE THE 



LOUISIANA STATE 

PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION, 



NEW IBERIA, LA., 



DECEMBER 28tti, 1893 



i 



NEW ORLEANS: 

L. Graham & Son, Ltd., 44 and 46 Baronne Street. 

J694. 



\3^ 

.355 



Fellow-teachers, 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

President Jefferson Davis once told me that the first po- 
litical speech he ever made was in reply to the great orator, 
S. S. Prentiss, of Mississippi, in a joint debate. After the 
discussion, in a friendly conversation, his eloquent opponent 
frankly, but kindly, criticised and complimented him, and con- 
cluded thus: " My young friend, when I was your age I began 
by trying to instruct and convince men by logic. It is in vain, 
and now I am satisfied to persuade by pleasing them." In 
this saying the veteran evinced his knowledge of mankind, and 
yet, with his warning before me, I am constrained to keep in 
the rougher road. My opportunities are so few, my message 
is, to my mind, so weighty, and my audience so capable of 
serious thought, that I shall venture to trespass on your indul- 
gence with sober reflections even at the risk of being a little 
prolix and dry, trusting to the distinguished speakers with us 
on this occasion to brighten it with humor and eloquence. 

When I look around me now, and see those who are gath- 
ered here for the great contest before us with the powers of 
ignorance, my heart swells with the presage of victory. It was 
not always thus. If we look back but a few years we can well 
remember how cold was the response to every call for broader 
and higher work in education. And if to-day we are assured 
of better things, we must remember that in that recent past it 
was not the will that was wanting, but the means. But the 
public school teachers have now met under the most encour- 
aging circumstances, and I am here to-day, in obedience to the 
request of your committee, to take part in your programme. 

It will be my business on this occasion to discuss the ques- 
tion of " State education as a factor in our civilization." 

Civilization is a word we all use every day, and everybody 
has a notion, more or less vague, of what is meant by it. But 
if we attempt to make clear and definite to our minds an exact 
conception of the state of affairs it expresses, we shall find our- 
selves involved in difficulties. The philosophic Guizot ex- 
plained it by citing a number of illustrations of what was not 



civilization, but to these negatives he added the main under- 
lying facts involved in it. He says: " The first idea comprised 
in the word civilization is the notion of progress, development. 
It calls up within us the notion of a people advancing, of a peo- 
ple in the course of improvement and melioration." He then 
explains progress and development as an improvement in the 
organization and well-being of the social state combined with 
the quickening of mind in the individual man. These two 
elements are comprised in the fact of civilization and go to 
make it up. 

All nature, all existence, seems dual if viewed aright. 
The Zoroastrian doctrine of two conflicting principles in the 
universe, though not true as held by those old Persians, con- 
tains a truth — a great truth. The centripetal and centrifugal 
forces appear in nearly every problem we propose to ourselves. 
By these forces, nature, life and society are held in equilib- 
rium; so that true progress is motion in an orbit, which is 
always the same in obedience to a general law of material or 
spiritual process, and yet never the same in its position in space 
or rational environment. The Greek Sage placed truth in the 
golden mean, and the best moderns have accepted the aphor- 
ism as an axiom. 

Two principles that are contradictory in their phenomena 
— their seemingness — and yet are bound by an inseparable 
unity are the principles of individual liberty and the principle 
of social order. The instinct of individual liberty, to which 
we owe so much, which requires for its fruition, courage, per- 
severance, aspiration and intelligence, and which leads to such 
grand results when properly directed, vanishes in the vagaries 
of the chartered libertine or of blind barbarian gropings, un- 
less brought into its due relations in the human soul by the 
binding centripetal instinct of social order. In its last analysis, 
individualism doubtless originates in selfishness, while social 
order is altruistic, regarding the welfare of others more than 
egoistic considerations ; and yet, by a strange paradox, the 
struggle by each man for personal liberty, for the inviolability 
of his own bodily freedom, of his right to think for himself, 
and of his native moral dignity — his self-respect — is the chief 
guaranty and final sanction of social order; while on the other 



hand, social order is the sole condition on which personal lib- 
erty and the freedom of the human will are possible. Men are 
born into society. Thev can not be born or reared or even 
live truly human lives, outside of it. It is a law of their being 
that they must think alike. They are so constituted that things 
look, sound and feel in the same way to healthy minds. There 
is a norm, or standard, to which few, if any, exactly conform 
in every respect, but from which few vary widely — an average, 
or median, way of perceiving things that is the fundamental 
condition of rational consciousness. Kant gives it the techni- 
cal name of "the transcendental unity of apperception." Pro- 
fessor Royce of Harvard, in one of his able books, with 
greater simplicity of speech, calls it " sanity," and this it is. 
The ability to work in harness with the rest of the human race, 
to share in " all thoughts, all passions, all delights, whatever 
stirs this mortal frame," its sympathies and its many-sided love, 
is the test of this sanity. He is most sane who is most central, 
sympathetic and energetic in his relations to his fellow man. 
Just in so far as one departs from this central position, he is a 
crank. When he becomes utterly alien to the general notion 
of things he is a lunatic — insane. Hence as the individual wills 
of citizens are brought into agreement to live according to a 
higher ideal, harmony ensues; and hence proceed social or- 
der, moral order, civilization, as the rational product and out- 
come of natural instincts. Social order is the vital air of lib- 
erty, its only possible continuing environment. I may go further 
and say that a true civilization, an ideal civilization, which is 
the most perfect expression of social order, is also its correla- 
tion with the liberty of the individual in its final and most con- 
crete form. That wonderful practical philosopher, the Em- 
peror Marcus Aurelius, said: " That which is not good for the 
swarm, neither is it good for the bee." 

The great onward movement of society, of which we all 
feel the thrill, is the effort, unconscious or only half conscious, 
to build up for itself a system of moral order in which the gen- 
eral or social relations shall be so co-ordinated and adjusted as 
to preserve that freedom of the will, that liberty of self-develop- 
ment, in which individual man can best realize his self-con- 
sciousness, can best lift himself to conformity with his divine 



ideal, can become more like his God. When that social con- 
dition is even measurably attained we shall for the first time 
witness a true civilization. But it will not come about by allow- 
ing every man an unchecked license. Society must fix the 
metes and bounds by law to much which is now left to an ar- 
bitrary self-will. That there is now nowhere such civilization 
as I have indicated must be apparent to any one who looks an 
inch beneath the varnish and veneer of the boasted centres of 
modern society. We need not go to the effete and putrid cities 
of Asia; lift the lid from the seething caldron of the great 
capitals of Europe and America and what do we see ? Are these 
cities that are built upon a rock? Are their foundations laid in 
the solid bedrock of justice between individuals and classes, of 
faithful, incorruptible, official service, of sound morality in the 
people? I wish I could answer •' yes." But we know that fair 
dealing between man and man is not only not sought, but not 
even taught; and that the contrary — the robber plan — " That 
he shall take who hath the power and he shall keep who can," 
is the rule. We know that public officers grow rich by sharing 
in the sale of franchises of which they are the trustees and cus- 
todians, not the owners. And we know that the whole structure 
of society rests upon a miasmatic marsh of hoodlumism, fre- 
quently endangering its stability and always poisoning its at- 
mosphere. We know, too, that ignorance, with its low ideals, 
is the most prolific cause of all this evil. When we look 
around us we can not fail to see that this human life of ours, 
as we are living it, is most tragic; but the tragedy -is stained 
and degraded by much that is ignoble and vile. Shall we then 
despair? Not so! We must gird our loins for the doing of 
God's work in the world, whatever come of it. And we may 
clearly hope that good will come of it. We know this, and 
our hearts are stirred to set right these wrongs, not for the good 
it will do us — for the sowers in the moral world do not gather 
the harvest — but because we are of a race foreordained to or- 
ganize and lift up humanity ; because we must be continually 
seeking a better order in which law and righteousness shall 
supplant arbitrary caprice and the manifold forms of wrong. 

In its highest and best form our ideal is of a state where 
justice and moral order shall reign, and where every citizen 



shall be protected in his rights of life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness. In a republic which had attained a true civiliza- 
tion, I may even say a reasonable civilization, this would be 
the case. There the public indignation would wax hot against 
any and all who assailed any individual in these, his sacred 
rights ; and the combined power of society would visit swift 
and ample punishment upon the wrong-doer who inflicted injury 
upon the life, person or property of another citizen. Protection 
of its citizens would be its prime duty, and this would extend 
to the untrammeled exercise of their free will, the right to think 
their own thoughts, and the right, so that they injured no one 
else, to seek happiness by the pursuit of legitimate aspirations. 
This all seems very easy and simple. The changes are rung 
upon it every day, as if it were the music to which we are 
marching and keeping time. But it matters not who says so, 
such is not the case. The realization of it looks so far away 
that an old man may well despair of ever beholding it with his 
eyes, and there is good reason to fear that even forty years' 
wandering in the wilderness will not bring any of you into the 
goodly inheritance of this Promised Land. If we could even 
have an assured view of it, as Moses of old from Pisgah, though 
we entered it not, we might cease to wring our hearts for the 
generations to come. That apostle of the Intellectual life 
through the Higher Education, Matthew Arnold, tells us, 

•' Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, 

More fortunate, alas! than we, 
Which, without hardness, will be sage, 

And gay without frivolity. 
Sons of the world, oh, speed those years; 
But while we wait, allow our tears! " 

Civilization — that is, civic life in its fullness, its accom- 
plished righteousness, its illuminated intellectual^, its realized 
moral aspirations — is as yet far away; — a Golden Jerusalem, 
that the scoffers and skeptics call a cloud and a sunset mirage; 
but we are sailing toward it, and true men hold to their course 
with as steady a purpose and as resolute hearts as sustained 
Columbus when, through storm}- billows and unknown seas, 
he kept on and on until there burst upon him the vision of a 
New World. Whosoever may perish in this voyage by peril 
of sea, the bark that bears us will surely touch the shore of a 



New World, where the bearer of the Cross, as Christopher 
loved to think himself, will find that practical Christianity, love 
for our fellow beings, set into the framework of an inflexible 
justice, has at last established the reign of peace on earth and 
good will among men. This is perfect civilization; and, with- 
out it, civilization is not. 

In this seeking for- a better state of affairs, unless wisdom 
guide our feet, we may go far astray. On one line, however, 
we can feel certain. For, however imperfect our methods, 
however defective our attainment, we are moving in the right 
direction, when, as teachers, we throw light into the dark 
places of the human mind and thus make possible the appre- 
hension of higher moral truths. Enlightenment is the neces- 
sary antecedent of an improved condition, We must know 
what is right before we do it. But while engaged in these 
tasks, often humble in character and degree, we are not hin- 
dered as citizens from aiding in other movements in that grand 
process to a higher moral order which seems the most mani- 
fest sign of the work of the Spirit of God on earth. 

I have sketched for you in broad characters what I con- 
ceive civilization to be. To state it in general terms again, it 
is the establishment of perfect moral order in society, yet in 
such manner as to secure and guaranty the freedom of the 
individual will; the superstructure resting on the consent and 
approval of the individuals who make up the community. But, 
in trying to make clear my notion of civilization, I have de- 
scribed a state of affairs that necessarily implies general educa- 
tion, which must mean State education. It would appear that 
there could be no civilization without it. 

It is the business of the State to train up its children to be 
useful citizens, each to fill his place and do his part in the social 
order. To make education do its work effectually a definite 
purpose must exist in the minds of the rulers who direct, of the 
government which shapes and carries out a scheme of educa- 
tion. Let me illustrate. The object of the Spartan common- 
wealth was to secure the power of its ruling class, the nobles, 
against foreign aggression and domestic disturbance. To per- 
petuate this order of things, it adopted immutable laws and 
trained every man by a most rigid and irksome discipline to 'the 



life of a soldier. A caste of subject citizens and a still lower 
caste of slaves — the unhappy Helots — completed the State, but 
without political rights. The education of the noble class was 
adapted to its ends, and a handful of Spartan warriors for hun- 
dreds of years astonished the world by the production of men 
phenomenal of their kind. I do not hold Sparta up to you for 
imitation, though that rock-ribbed little republic presented many 
virtues worthy of imitation; one virtue especially, too often for- 
gotten, that loyalty to home and to brethren of our own blood 
and lineage which modern definitions forbid us to call patriotism. 
Sparta trained and banded its citizens to the end that the state 
should not perish and that it should dominate whomsoever it 
came in contact with, and so became formidable. Philip of 
Macedon and his great son, Alexander, enlarged the idea, and 
conquered the world. I have used the example of Sparta, as 
I have said, as an illustration of the value of a definite purpose 
in government and in education. 

But the world has moved ; and another, a broader, a higher 
purpose is perceived by the people and revealed by govern- 
ments, and especially, I hope, by our American common- 
wealths, in framing schemes for the education of their children. 
It was a mighty step in advance when society admitted that it 
existed for the sake of the individual, even as the individual 
existed for societ}'; that the duties of obedience and protection 
were correlative. But the dogma which has prevailed so ex- 
tensively, that society owed to individuals protection against 
each other merely — nothing more — falls far short of the truth. 
This is practically admitted in every public improvement that 
is undertaken, in every organized governmental effort for the 
amelioration of the social condition. Without delaying the 
course of these remarks by the argument of this question, we 
may assume what has long been the theory on which society 
has acted, that it is the duty of the state not only to protect its 
citizens in their -fundamental rights, but to use all possible 
means to give them the opportunity for the highest development 
of their native powers and gifts ; for thus only can society, 
acting through its individual members, realize its own highest 
development; thus only, indeed, can it insure its continued ex- 
istence and permanent safety. It is at last clearly perceived 



that the purpose tor which the state exists is, as I have said, a 
constant evolution toward a better moral order, expressing itself 
in a higher and purer civilization, and that this progress of so- 
ciety is to be achieved only by that training of the individual 
which we sum up under the term education. The state under- 
takes a general system of education because it is for the bene- 
fit of the state, for the general welfare, for the preservation and 
improvement of the social order. 

And first, I may say to you, my brethren, that the only 
possible way to attain this higher and better order of things is 
to be constant and instant in well doing for the state, to take 
long views of our course of action and short views in our act- 
ing, " to do the next thing," to help and insist on every better- 
ment of our political condition, by constitutional amendment, 
by legislative act, by municipal ordinance, by organized asso- 
ciations and by popular opinion. But your especial business 
is to form a clear and high ideal of the duty of the state in the 
education of its children and do your best to attain this ideal in 
actual practice. 

What education will achieve this? What preparation of 
our young people will best fit each to reach up to and realize 
the fullness of his power? 

Let us take the case of a little child. We have all felt the 
force of Wordsworth's beautiful suggestion that — 

" Heaven lies about us in our infancy;" 

and elsewhere in the Excursion: 

" Thou who didst wrap the cloud 
Of infancy around us that Thyself 
Therein, with our simplicity, awhile 
Might'st hold on earth communion undisturbed." 

Surely the divine reason that has lit the spark in a human soul 
keeps breathing upon it until it shines with its full intelligence. 
In the first mysterious struggles of the mind in infancy and 
early childhood, maternal care, born of an instinctive affection, 
should I not rather say inspired by an effluence of divinity, 
gives the impulse, that, acting conjointly with the inherited 
nature of the babe, opens its eyes and its consciousness to 
the action of the exterior world. The mother's love is the 



purest reflection of the divine love we see here on earth. Her 
instincts teach her how to teach her child. The mother is all 
suggestion; the infant responds by imitation. Infinite repeti- 
tion and imitation of a gesture, a word, an idea, fixes it on the 
plastic brain of the child, and this process goes on continually, 
until it has a well earned stock of infant lore, of baby knowl- 
edge, more or less useful, according to the wisdom of the 
mother. The misfortune is that this instruction does not con- 
tinue long enough. Circumstances, household cares, a hun- 
dred causes distract the mother from the most useful and 
important business of hei life ; for the highest vocation to which 
a human being is called is motherhood, and the highest func- 
tion of motherhood is building up the child for this world and 
the next. Mothers, build up your children all you can, mind, 
body and soul, before you pass them on to the next best friend 
they can have, a conscientious teacher. 

Richter, in his Levana, a most suggestive book to teachers, 
says: "Like the eggs of birds, whether of song or prey, and 
like the new-born young of the dove, or of the vulture, all at 
first require warmth, not nourishment, which might have a 
different effect. And what, then, is warmth to the human 
chicken? Happiness." Under such poetic form this greal 
thinker has veiled a profound philosophic thought, and it is to 
this that I direct your attention. All that a mother has to do 
at first is to secure the happiness of her child by attention to 
its physical well being and by protecting it from moral and 
mental shock. Enjoyment in its possession and in its gladness 
is better for her and for it than the often misdirected effort to 
train it and teach it. Babyhood is the realm of innocence, 
not of wisdom. The mother brings into the young life the joy 
she feels in being a mother, and in the sunshine of the soul the 
infant grows and buds and blossoms. We are told that in 
Japan one never hears an angry word to a child, and that children 
grow up in an atmosphere of gentleness and courtesy. If this 
be so there, and it should be so everywhere, then it has touched, 
in one respect at least, a higher point of civilization than any 
Christian land. The curse of childhood is fear. It makes 
cowards; it makes liars; it makes tyrants. Dispel this black 
cloud from the lives of our little ones, and light them up with 



10 

" the warmth of happiness," the sunshine of love. I was never 
a harsh father, but I can truly say that I regret every act of 
severe discipline exercised toward my children. There is another 
and a better way, but your hearts must teach it to you. If you 
can only respond to the natural craving of childhood for 
knowledge by answering truly and wisely the questions that 
agitate it, education will go on as fast as heart can wish. 

When I was a young man, I was very much afraid of hurt- 
ing children's minds with books; of course, there is danger of 
such a thing. But experience has taught me that it does not 
exist, if books are rightly used. There is no reason why a 
very young child may not learn the alphabet or the numerals as 
readily as a like number of other objects, or why the printed 
or written word is so very much harder to remember than the 
uttered word. A little learned every day soon puts a child in 
possession of the tools which it can use to build for itself the 
scaffolding for great thoughts. Coleridge sings, 

" In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure dome decree." 

But neither poet nor prince ever built a pleasure dome loftier, 
or filled with wilder delights, than does the riotous imagination 
of childhood. And here let me say what I can not now dilate 
on ; in my opinion, there is a sound, philosophical basis for the 
kindergarten, if judiciously employed, and especially for chil- 
dren of homes in which they are neglected either through fault 
or misfortune. I wish there could be a kindergarten in every 
village and school district in the State. But children should 
not tarry in them too long. 

The time comes, however, w r hen there is no dispute that 
children should be in a school where the great fundamentals of 
knowledge, the tools of knowledge, and the use of them are 
taught. They ought all to learn to read and write and count. 
It pavs. Such a general basis of knowledge is like the current 
coin without which commerce is impossible, except in its rude 
form of barter. Without this small change — the dimes and 
quarter dollars— of human intercourse, all communication de- 
generates into clownish chatter and clumsy mistakes. To be 
able to read a sign post is something. It puts a man on his 
way, when otherwise he might be put out of it with great loss 



11 

and peril. To handle simple arithmetic does not seem much; 
but it really means a great deal to the commonwealth. The 
difference between a community that has mastered it and one 
ignorant of it is immense — it is the difference between bar- 
barism and a quasi civilization. It is of no use talking about it; 
our people must all have the primary school education. And we 
may justly claim that much is being done in this matter ; but 
still we must recollect how small a part it is of what there is to 
do. Let us make haste to get about this work and lift the 
reproach of ignorance from the good name of our State. 

But what children shall stop at this point, the end of the 
primary grade, and who shall go on? Who must be .satisfied 
with just these rudiments of knowledge? This is a question 
most reasonable to ask. Natural selection will nearly answer 
it. There are comparatively few that you can induce to go on. 
Everybody knows that books and book-learning, no matter how 
useful in their place, do not complete the true idea of educa- 
tion. The great mass of our knowledge and training is ac- 
quired outside of the school room. Everybody understands 
in some sort of a way that, while the rudiments of knowledge 
will help to get a living and to smooth the pathway of life, they 
are after all, as I have called them, mere tools. You know a 
machine is only an adjustment of the primitive tools so that 
they can be made to work together with vastly increased power 
and efficiency. In like manner the knowledges, the arts and 
sciences, in their simple groupings and in their fullness and 
highest reaches, are machines framed and adapted from those 
humble rudiments of knowledge. But there is many a hand 
that knows itself fitted to the axe or the hoe, but not to guide 
an engine. Many, indeed most, minds find themselves satis- 
fied with physical or mental labor that requires little skill. They 
employ successfully the simplest implements, some of handi- 
craft, some of thought, but have no aptitude for the more diffi- 
cult problems. Destiny has decreed the length of every man's 
tether. He can not go beyond it. Education is meant to en- 
able him to avail himself of it to its utmost extent. In plain 
language I repeat that most people will not go beyond the pri- 
mary grade of education through some unfitness for further 
cultivation. They have no appetite for abstruser thought. In 



12 

most men there is a decided aversion to it. A hard necessity 
arising from the narrowness of the family resources checks and 
turns aside many who could, and should, rise higher in the in- 
tellectual scale. Where this is a real necessity, it is one of the 
sad things of life. But very often it is a mere pretext, spring- 
ing from an unwillingness to make sacrifices or from doubts 
as to the reality of educational advantages. In either of these 
cases, the youth is cut off from further progress. But if he is 
content, no great loss will ensue to society or to himself. But 
genius refuses to be satisfied with mediocre conditions. It zuill 
go on. I remember that every discouragement was thrown in 
the way of the distinguished mathematician and astronomer 
Mary Somerville by her parents, to prevent ■ her learning 
mathematics ; but when the candles were taken away to keep 
her from studying geometry, she went over the propositions by 
mere force of memory. Finally, her father, Admiral Fairfax, 
said to her mother, "Peg, we must put a stop to this or we 
shall have Mary in a strait-jacket one of these days. There 
was X, who went raving mad about the longitude." Yet Mrs. 
Somerville later in life touched the topmost heights of astro- 
nomical science, through an unquenchable thirst for its study. 
And you will all recollect the obstacles thrown in the way of 
the illustrious Pascal, with the sole effect of stimulating him to 
higher endeavor. And this is not uncommon experience. 

But, apart from people of genius, you will find as the re- 
sult of a prevalent intellectual inertia that the great majority of 
our young people are stopped on, or before, the close of their 
schooling in the primary grades. That I am not mistaken in 
this may be seen in the New Orleans Schools, where out of 
20,000 children only about 600 are in the High Schools. Still, 
it is sheerest folly to undervalue the enormous uplift of enlight- 
enment of our people, the tremendous advance in civilization, 
effected by a general diffusion of primary school education. 
The only parallel I can think of is what the geographers tell 
us. A rise of fifteen feet of the ocean level would submerge 
one-half of the Gulf States. Let the waters rise — the tidal 
wave of knowledge ! 

There are persons who, thinking their interest in the 
schools at an end when their connection with them ceases, 



13 

declaim against any further education by the State or through 
public taxation. Let us look into this a little. Two classes 
of objections are raised against public High School education. 
One is that it is a rich man's school, to which the poor man's 
children can not afford to go, and for whose instruction they 
have no use. The other is that it is a poor man's school, 
to which the rich man's children do not go, and for which 
he should not be obliged to pay taxes. These objections are 
suicidal; both can not be true, and in fact neither is true. It 
is neither the rich man's school nor the poor man's. It 
is the citizens' school, in which the State give its children, rich 
and poor, a chance to find out whether they are able to eat of 
the tree of knowledge, whether they have appetite and teeth 
and digestion to strip the rind and feed upon the heart of it. 
Is it not plain, too, that the young man who knows that he has 
been educated by the state for her service will be more apt 
to feel his obligation as a citizen than he who believes that he 
owes his education to his family only? There is, it is true, no 
real difference between the two cases in a final analysis, as the 
father's enjoyment of protection and his opportunities for his 
family are given him by the state, but this is not obvious 
to every one, and the ordinary man is apt to feel as I have just 
mentioned. 

When the commonwealth calls its militia into service, 
every one understands the necessity of company officers and 
regimental officers, and nobod) complains that provision has 
been made for training them. It should seem equally plain 
that the State should provide for the High School, which trains 
the people who are to officer society ; foremen in its shops, 
who rise till they own them; accountants and clerks, 
who become the heads of firms; leading farmers and planters, 
who introduce method into their affairs and point out the way 
to convert loss into profit. These and others like them in 
other vocations are the men that officer society, that give it 
coherence and organization, that keep it marching to the music 
of progress. If the State would exist, it must see to it that 
there shall be an ample supply of these men. If the State 
does not equip her own sons for these positions, she must be 
content to see them filled by aliens, as has so often been the 



14 

case in Louisiana, in the mechanic arts and many other 
branches of business. And this is the best proot that citizens 
thus equipped are necessary, and that such knowledge must be 
had by importation or education. It is evidently an important 
element in our civilization, and should be part of the educa- 
tion provided by the State. To the objection of those who 
point to Germany and say that it is easy to overstock a 
country with superior men, the proper reply is that it is not easy 
to overstock the world, and when we have too many at home 
we can send them abroad to lead and govern other countries, 
as Old England and New England have done, and as Ger- 
many is now doing. 

Let me guard my words a little here, for it is veiy eas\ to 
misunderstand any man's talk. When I speak of officers of so- 
ciety, of course 1 do not mean that people who only go through 
the primary grades constitute one class of society and High 
School pupils another. I have said often and in a great many 
ways that the school house gives and can give a very small part 
of the education any person receives. It is the thinking a man 
does that educates him. He may gain in a school a good deal 
of knowledge, which is very useful material for thought. He 
gets something to think about. He ought also to learn in school 
where to go to find out things, the books to be used, and how 
to use them. But most of all, if he is well taught, he gets the 
habit of thinking aright, of requiring proper and sufficient evi- 
dence for his beliefs, of arriving at sound judgments. He may 
possibly get all this elsewhere, but he is not apt to. And all 
this is not apparent on the surface, it is not complete in any one 
individual ; it is not a perfect work. But it is all in the right 
direction, and such is the practical outcome of it. The primary 
school does somewhat; the high school continues the good 
work, and yet that is not the end of it; the college goes on 
with this education, widening the knowledge of the student and 
training him through harder tasks and subtler methods to a 
firmer and more active intellectual habit. 

What I wish most to impress upon you is the unity of 
a true educational system. The development of the human 
mind is a continuous process in which every contact with its envi- 
ronment effects a modification, and this constitutes that 



15 

grand education of life that goes on from the cradle to the 
grave. So the formal education of the school, which makes 
so small yet so important a part of the Life Education, if 
properly conducted is, in like manner, continuous. But the 
ceaseless flow of time itself is marked on the dial plate by an 
arbitrary division into hours, that stated periods may exist for 
their appointed tasks. And so by the divisions, more or less 
arbitrary, we have graded education into Primary, Secondary 
and Higher, with their subdivisions. Suppose the State has 
given a boy all that the lowest stage affords, and he now steps 
up from the Primary to the High School. He is the self-same 
boy whom the state cherished as its child a moment before. 
Shall it now cast him off, or will it encourage his advance, as 
it commanded his start, in the field of knowledge? Its 
motive then was its right and duty to call into requisition for 
its own safety, progress and greatness all the possibilities of 
all its citizens. This motive is mightily reinforced when it is 
discovered that here are 'some who are willing to go on with 
that discipline which experience has shown to be a fair test and 
preparation for severer mental tasks. So again when he 
leaves the High School and enters College. These phases 
are but unfoldings in that process of evolution through which 
he comes to a fuller knowledge of the universe of matter and 
the spirit that includes it and to stronger powers and desires to 
serve his fellow man and the social order to which he belongs. 
The people of the State should rejoice as they see the aspirants 
for the higher education increase. It is the few — the remnant, 
Isaiah calls them — who save the world. An army knows the 
value of individuals. It is glad to hear of a reinforcement; 
but the coming of a Man stirs it like sound of an archangel's 
trumpet. When Lee stood at Gett3^sburg or Petersburg, 
could he have summoned to his aid from out of the invisible a 
legion of heroes or Stonewall Jackson, do you doubt his 
choice? 

Friends may fear that I concede too much when I speak 
of the graduates of the University as few in number. They 
should not be few; they will not be few. They must become 
a great multitude, with its captains, not only of tens and hun- 
dreds, but of thousands. But there can not be any jealousy of 



16 

the remnant — the few — but only relatively the few — the few 
whom the State has educated to serve her. Those who have 
been trained to amass wealth, rarely use it, except for personal 
gratification — for themselves. But when the Intellectual Life 
has been zealously sought through the Higher Education the 
very opposite feeling is apt to prevail. Its hierarchy see them- 
selves the children of the state, the dear mother, who makes 
their abiding place a home to be proud of, and they behold in 
their fellow citizens, not rivals in the scramble for riches, but 
brethren; and Fraternity becomes a real thing to them. 

But there will always be a class of minds that will ask, " Is 
it right for the State to spend large sums for the benefit of the 
few?" The real question is not as to the benefit of these few, 
though there is an answer to that, but as to the benefit of the 
man)'. Is it right for the State to exert its utmost energies to 
qualify men to defend her, to strengthen her, to enrich her, to 
counsel her wisely, to guide her justly, to place her in the fore- 
front of civilized commonwealths? All states and nations are 
answering these questions, each after its own fashion, some 
with enthusiasm, others with steady purpose, others again half- 
heartedly and bunglingly, and some like " dumb, driven 
cattle" ? To which class shall we belong? 

Those nations whose opinion are best worth considering 
are agreed as to the great value of State Education as a factor- 
in their civilization, and the wisest and greatest of them lay the 
greatest stress on the unity of the educational system, its co- 
herence, and the special importance of its highest or University 
phase. Germany has tested and proved the theory that the 
best trained heads win the game of war ; France has accepted, 
and improved, the lesson ; Japan has found in a thorough and 
logical system of education the Fountain of Youth for her out- 
worn nationality; and the young and vigorous commonwealths 
of our Federal Union look to State Education as the gymna- 
sium in which they will be fitted to grasp and enjoy all that is 
best in the social order. 

It is the duty of the hour in Louisiana to adopt and per- 
fect a system of education that will bring about the best results 
for us. To be complete, it must, as I have suggested, rest 
upon the general education of the whole people. The plan 



17 

already in use should be vigorously carried out and its details 
continually improved. The Parish and City High Schools 
should be increased and made better, and every encourage- 
ment should be given to institutions devoted to the Higher Edu- 
cation. I heard with great pleasure the practical suggestions 
of President Boyd this morning and hope they may be carried 
out. 

For Tulane University I wish to say one word. It is a 
component part ol the State system of education, as much as 
any Primary School, or High School, in the State; and it has 
always attempted to fulfil its obligations as a State institution. 
Like the Louisiana State University, this university was recog- 
nized in the Constitution, and there was a constitutional grant 
of $10,000 for its support. When the new charter was con- 
ferred, in view of the generous provision made by Mr. Tulane 
for the support of Tulane University and in view of the im- 
poverished condition of the State treasury at that time, this 
grant was relinquished. Instead of receiving aid from the State, 
the Tulane Administrators freely dedicated their revenues to 
build up a great University in the City of New Orleans, and 
to do for the people of the State what their representatives felt 
unable or unwilling to undertake for it. It would seem a corol- 
lary of all I have said that the public purse should pay for the 
highest, as well as the lowest, phases of education. But in conse- 
quence of what may have been a fortunate failure in government 
to perceive this obvious truth in the early days of the republic, 
requisition was made on private beneficence to supply this de- 
fect, and there has been developed in America a spirit of bene- 
faction to higher education in the hearts of individuals such as 
the world has never before seen; and this after all may be the 
better way. Mr. Tulane's great and generous gifts were in 
line of these noble charities, and those of Mrs. Newcomb and 
Mrs. Richardson, which have added to them, were inspired by 
the same clear perception that we best serve God in helping 
man. The consecration of the wealth entrusted to their 
stewardship by Providence to the grand purposes of the Higher 
Education relieves the general public from a heavy burden of 
taxation to accomplish these ends. But it imposes upon it a 
debt of gratitude to these philanthropists, and upon every citi- 



18 

zen an obligation, each in his own way, to aid in carrying out 
these benevolent designs. But more than this, where a like 
ability exists, it furnishes an example for imitation. It is a 
strange thing how the human heart responds to a generous 
deed ; and we may confidently look for similar donations to 
aid in building up the weak places of the University and in 
perfecting work that it is laboring with difficulty to accomplish. 
But when the work of the University is done, and while it is 
doing, you will see how large a factor it is in the civilizing pro- 
cess that brings to pass a better order of things. You will find 
not only that it is strengthening them that labor to improve 
our material resources, but that its voice is always raised on the 
side of law, justice, humanity and progress. I beg you to bear 
in mind that the great movement of education in the Primary 
Schools, High Schools, Colleges and Universities is as essen- 
tially one and the same great stream of thought, the same flood 
tide of human reason, as the Mississippi river is one river at its 
fountain head and at its mouth. 

But I can not close this address, my friends, without adding 
a word on the vocation to which we are called. The measure 
of a people's wisdom can be taken by the respect and honor 
paid to the profession of the teacher ; and, if I am not mistaken 
in this assertion, then assuredly the people of the South have 
gained wonderfully in good sense in the last generation. The 
teachers have to a large extent the moulding of the future of 
the ?tate through its rising generation. They are the mission- 
aries of knowledge, the doorkeepers of the dawn of general 
intelligence in the coming time. It is not achievement, how- 
ever, but effort, that makes great the individual. We may say 
with Browning, 

" But try. I urge — the trying shall suffice; 
The aim, if reached or not. makes great the life." 

It is in the aspiration and the endeavor that education does 
its best work, and this applies to us who have passed our school 
days as well as to the diligent and ambitious student. We can 
well afford to do our duty, and leave the consequences to Him 
who orders all things. 

In this profession rank is no more the test of merit than 
in others. When 1 think of how many fine qualities are 



19 

called forth in the conscientious teaching of a Primary School; 
the industry, the patience, the tact, the benevolence, that are 
required to lead on the timid, trembling footsteps of a child in 
the pathway of knowledge, my soul bows in admiration before 
those truly good and noble natures that do this work in the 
spirit of humility and love for the little ones. When the cloud 
of despondency lowers over them, as it does over us all at 
times, let them recollect that they have the most difficult and 
delicate tasks in the whole range of educational work, and 
that their success may be the most fruitful of results. 
I only wish that I could feel that I «had done my work half so 
well as I know many of you have done yours ; but to each ac- 
cording to his strength. And now God be with us all. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




